Tuesday, September 25, 2007 9:40:45 AM
Rising Up for Justice
In Jena, Louisiana, a noose was left dangling from a tree as a message of intimidation
DEPARTMENT No Comment [ http://www.harpers.org/subjects/NoComment ]
BY Scott Horton [ http://www.harpers.org/subjects/ScottHorton ]
PUBLISHED September 23, 2007
On Thursday, I took a train ride up the East Coast from Washington to New York, with some stops along the way. Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Newark and finally I was back home in Penn Station. It was a familiar trip. But there was something remarkable about this one. At every stop along the way I saw throngs of young people, of all races, but they were high school students for the most part. And everywhere they were wearing T-shirts expressing solidarity with the “Jena 6.”
“This is about justice,” one young woman explained to me in the dining court in Union Station. “It’s about the fight for justice in the South, in Jena, Louisiana, where my people get a different kind of justice from your people.” She was passionate, and a bit miffed that I didn’t know about the “Jena 6.”
The story of the “Jena 6” hasn’t gotten much coverage in America’s mainstream media—or didn’t until that day, when tens of thousands of protestors descended on the town of Jena.
And as I read some accounts of the events that led to this protest, I kept thinking: Tulia! The Tulia 46 [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulia,_Texas ]. While George W. Bush was governor of Texas, 46 people, 40 of them Black–a large part of the town’s Black population–were arrested and charged by a rogue cop in this West Texas town who secured their conviction and incarceration all on the basis of his say-so. It was very quickly established that the cop was a notorious racist and a liar. Nevertheless, most of the Tulia 46 languished in prison and despite rising public cries for Bush to use his authority as governor to reverse a manifest injustice, Bush did absolutely nothing. This was one of the first signs of George W. Bush’s idea of justice.
I have been dealing intensively with questions of justice for my entire life, mostly as an advocate for people overseas. I always knew there were justice problems in America. Every society has them, and try as it may, no society will ever be free of them.
But in my lifetime, I’ve always had the sense that the American government at its highest echelons, whether the administration be Democrat or Republican, stood for justice. The problems were kinks deep in the system: a crooked judge, a prosecutor on a vendetta, a juror on the take, a rotten cop. There might be differences on one policy or another, some engendering passionate debate, but there was agreement on the basics. I never had the sense that the president was twisting the system, or that the Department of Justice had become a tool of political corruption or oppression. In fact, I was proud of the American justice system. Proud to cite it as a model for others. And proud of the principles that it reflected, and the professionalism of those who served in it.
This has changed. All those high school students are right to sound the alarm bell. I won’t make any comments about the “Jena 6” case in particular, but I do believe that our justice system has been dangerously corrupted. And the most worrying source of that corruption is right at the top, George W. Bush, the president and the senior-most crew of advisors he brought into Washington in 2001. Karl Rove, who believes that all institutions of government should be turned to perpetuate the power of the G.O.P.
Bush has systematically taken a sledge hammer to the basic institutions of our legal system. He has used the criminal justice system for partisan games. His Justice Department launched prosecutions against dozens of people around the country not because of any real sense of wrongdoing, but because he considered these people to be a threat to the G.O.P.’s monopoly on power. The case of Governor Siegelman in Alabama is just one case; the Mississippi cases surrounding Oliver Diaz, Paul Minor and others fit the same pattern; as does the Thompson prosecution in Wisconsin; and a good dozen further cases I have examined.
To wield the criminal justice power in such a way is a very great crime. It is an attack against democracy; an act of betrayal of the system Bush swore an oath to uphold.
In fact the critical word that describes this conduct is tyrannical. If we examine Aristotle’s classic definition of what makes a tyrant, found in the Politics [ http://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/hbc-90001199 (below)], we find that Bush passes each test. While possessed of public authority and therefore accountable to the people, he denies accountability and he cloaks his own conduct in secrecy. Conversely, he refuses to respect the privacy of the common citizen, embarking upon massive invasions of privacy through the introduction of an unlawful warrantless surveillance program that incorporates data mining into the communications of tens of millions of Americans. He doesn’t bother to ask Congress to change the law. He just breaks it. And he lies about it, too.
He contrives foreign wars, launched on consciously false representations. He depletes the nation’s treasury with its cost. And he uses the war as a justification to arrogate to himself still greater powers which he strips away from the people and the other institutions of government.
And when he uses the word “justice,” it sends a shiver up my spine. George Bush has no sense of the meaning of this word. For him it means nothing more than an act of personal vengeance.
But when the Founding Fathers said “justice,” they meant something beautiful and noble. They saw a new society which was marked by a public conception of justice. That is, it would be a society in which every person accepts and appreciates that others similarly accept a series of shared first principles of rights and justice. And they conceived a republic crafted of institutions which were founded on those principles. And lastly, they envisioned a series of principles of justice, which were proclaimed and shared, and shared by society as a whole as a basis for justice. Among these principles is the idea of a government of limited powers, in which the functions of the state, and responsibilities with respect to the creation and maintenance of a justice system are shared equally by the three branches.
This was the Founding Father’s view. But for George W. Bush, this was inconvenient. He preferred a system under which his own personal powers were ascendant, and the notion of public justice receded as a personal “justice” rose in its place. Hence hitherto unthinkable things have happened; indeed, they have become commonplace. American citizens arrested in the United States are locked away with no access to a court on the basis of secret and unchallengeable Presidential “determinations.” Prisoners taken in wartime are stripped of all rights and treated with brutality and wanton cruelty. The President arrogantly proclaims that he is not bound by the law. And for each of these acts Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson, even Alexander Hamilton would have the same word: tyrant!
Can it come as any surprise that a man who behaves this way with enemies on a field of battle adopts a similar attitude towards those he reckons his domestic political enemies? America has been slow to recognize the full scope of this abuse, and too quick to credit the claims of Alberto Gonzales and his minions about those who have been charged, tried and often enough convicted in our courts. But the abuses meted out in political prosecutions are even greater assaults on our notion of justice.
Consider this: Governor Siegelman, accused of something which most public integrity prosecutors feel is not a crime in the first place, is sentenced to seven years and four months in prison. That’s the average sentence for a man convicted of a homicide in Alabama. And the judge who sentences him is a “loyal Bushie,” a member of the Executive Committee of the Republican Party, a person with a notorious grudge against him—who was assigned to the case under extremely suspicious circumstances. Or Paul Minor, the principal funder of the Mississippi Democratic Party, likewise convicted of charges which most attorneys consider not to be crimes, who was sentenced to a term of eleven years by another vindictive Republican judge before whom Bush had dangled the prospect of a promotion while the case was pending. The heavy stench of corruption surrounds these cases–corruption not of the accused, but of the persecutors, and it leads, repeatedly, straight into the White House.
And compare this with Scooter Libby, who, unlike Siegelman and Minor, actually did commit a serious crime. He will serve no sentence, thanks to Bush’s intervention—which was clearly timed to block his cooperation with prosecutors looking into further wrongdoing in the White House.
Or consider the cases involving private military contractors accused of murder, assault, torture, rape, extortion, kidnapping and other serious crimes. Not a single case prosecuted. And after an incident in Baghdad in which Blackwater contractors opened fire, leaving twenty-eight civilians dead [ http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2984819.ece (below)], what will happen? Don’t hold your breath expecting accountability. There will be none. Why? The Bush Administration tells us it doesn’t have the prosecutorial resources to deal with trivial things like murder, rape, assault and contract fraud involving tens of billions of dollars. All those prosecutorial resources have been diverted to locking up grandmothers in the inner city who file an incorrect voter registration form (and are suspected of being Democrats), Democrats who are guilty of campaign fundraising rule infractions, or who received political donations which are being labelled corrupt. In the mind of these Rovian prosecutors, what is corrupt about the donations is that they were made to Democrats, and not to Republicans. Now that’s corruption. A breathtaking betrayal that threatens the very foundation of our society. A cause for first anger and then rage.
And it’s plain enough that in the eyes of this administration, the life of an Iraqi, or an Afghan counts for nothing. As Blaise Pascal tells us [ http://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/hbc-90001270 (below)], when force is employed without justice, it is tyranny. This is tyranny.
A Government that views the lives of foreign citizens as worthless will in the shortest of time come to the same conclusions with respect to its own citizens. Indeed, look at what happened in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.
I’m proud of those hundreds of thousands of teenagers who took a stand for justice by recalling the incidents in Jena. I see the words of the prophet Isaiah, “a little child shall lead them.” The aspiration for justice is still alive, and it’s a great and noble thing–something for their parents to learn from. Two hundred and thirty years ago, America was a great beacon for justice. That beacon was viewed around the world and gave hope to all of mankind. And today, America’s wannabe autocrat has all but extinguished that beacon. It’s up to each of us as citizens to do what we can to rekindle it. Can we have any more important duty to our country than this?
---
Scott Horton is a contributor to Harper's Magazine and writes No Comment for this website.
A New York attorney known for his work in emerging markets and international law, especially human rights law and the law of armed conflict, Horton lectures at Columbia Law School. A life-long human rights advocate, Scott served as counsel to Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner, among other activists in the former Soviet Union. He is a co-founder of the American University in Central Asia, and has been involved in some of the most significant foreign investment projects in the Central Eurasian region. Scott recently led a number of studies of abuse issues associated with the conduct of the war on terror for the New York City Bar Association, where he has chaired several committees, including, most recently, the Committee on International Law. He is also a member of the board of the National Institute of Military Justice, the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, the EurasiaGroup and the American Branch of the International Law Association.
---
© 2007 The Harper's Magazine Foundation (emphasis in original)
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/09/hbc-90001272
==========
Aristotle on Tyrants and War
DEPARTMENT No Comment
PUBLISHED September 19, 2007
Detail of The School of Athens by Raffaello Sanzio (1509), showing Plato (left) and Aristotle (right)
. . . and further, it is part [of the nature of tyranny] to strive to see that all the affairs of the tyrant are secret, but that nothing is kept hidden of what any subject says or does, rather everywhere he will be spied upon . . . . Also it is part of these tyrannical measures to impoverish the nation so as to bolster the funds available for military defense, and so that the common citizens will be occupied with earning their livelihood and will have neither leisure nor opportunity to engage in conspiratorial acts . . . . Thus, the tyrant is inclined constantly to foment wars in order to preserve his own monopoly of power.
–Aristotle, Politics bk v, xi (350 BCE)
© 2007 The Harper's Magazine Foundation
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/hbc-90001199
==========
The real story of Baghdad's Bloody Sunday
Six days ago, at least 28 civilians died in a shooting incident involving the US security company Blackwater. But what actually happened? Kim Sengupta reports from the scene of the massacre
Published: 21 September 2007
The eruption of gunfire was sudden and ferocious, round after round mowing down terrified men women and children, slamming into cars as they collided and overturned with drivers frantically trying to escape. Some vehicles were set alight by exploding petrol tanks. A mother and her infant child died in one of them, trapped in the flames.
The shooting on Sunday, by the guards of the American private security company Blackwater, has sparked one of the most bitter and public disputes between the Iraqi government and its American patrons, and brings into sharp focus the often violent conduct of the Western private armies operating in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, immune from scrutiny or prosecution.
Blackwater's security men are accused of going on an unprovoked killing spree. Hassan Jabar Salman, a lawyer, was shot four times in the back, his car riddled with eight more bullets, as he attempted to get away from their convoy. Yesterday, sitting swathed in bandages at Baghdad's Yarmukh Hospital, he recalled scenes of horror. "I saw women and children jump out of their cars and start to crawl on the road to escape being shot," said Mr Salman. "But still the firing kept coming and many of them were killed. I saw a boy of about 10 leaping in fear from a minibus, he was shot in the head. His mother was crying out for him, she jumped out after him, and she was killed. People were afraid."
At the end of the prolonged hail of bullets Nisoor Square was a scene of carnage with bodies strewn around smouldering wreckage. Ambulances trying to pick up the wounded found their path blocked by crowds fleeing the gunfire.
Yesterday, the death toll from the incident, according to Iraqi authorities, stood at 28. And it could rise higher, say doctors, as some of the injured, hit by high-velocity bullets at close quarter, are unlikely to survive.
With public anger among Iraqis showing no sign of abating, the US administration has suspended all land movement by officials outside the heavily fortified Green Zone.
The Iraqi government has revoked Blackwater's licence to operate but it still remains employed by the US government. The Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, has, however, promised a "transparent" inquiry into what happened.
Blackwater and the US State Department maintain that the guards opened fire in self-defence as they reacted to a bomb blast and then sniper fire. Amid continuing accusations and recriminations, The Independent has tried to piece together events on that day.
The reports we got from members of the public, Iraqi security personnel and government officials, as well as our own research, leads to a markedly different scenario than the American version. There was a bomb blast. But it was too far away to pose any danger to the Blackwater guards, and their State Department charges. We have found no Iraqi present at the scene who saw or heard sniper fire.
Witnesses say the first victims of the shootings were a couple with their child, the mother and infant meeting horrific deaths, their bodies fused together by heat after their car caught fire. The contractors, according to this account, also shot Iraqi soldiers and police and Blackwater then called in an attack helicopter from its private air force which inflicted further casualties.
Blackwater disputes most of this. In a statement the company declared that those killed were "armed insurgents and our personnel acted lawfully and appropriately in a war zone protecting American lives".
The day after the killings, Mirenbe Nantongo, a spokeswoman for the US embassy, said the Blackwater team had " reacted to a car bombing". The embassy's information officer, Johann Schmonsees, stressed " the car bomb was in proximity to the place where State Department personnel were meeting, and that was the reason why Blackwater responded to the incident" .
Those on the receiving end tell another story. Mr Salman said he had turned into Nisoor Square behind the Blackwater convoy when the shooting began. He recalled: "There were eight foreigners in four utility vehicles, I heard an explosion in the distance and then the foreigners started shouting and signalling for us to go back. I turned the car around and must have driven about a hundred feet when they started shooting. My car was hit with 12 bullets it turned over. Four bullets hit me in the back and another in the arm. Why they opened fire? I do not know. No one, I repeat no one, had fired at them. The foreigners had asked us to go back and I was going back in my car, so there was no reason for them to shoot."
Muhammed Hussein, whose brother was killed in the shooting, said: "My brother was driving and we saw a black convoy ahead of us. Then I saw my brother suddenly slump in the car. I dragged him out of the car and saw he had been shot in the chest. I tried to hide us both from the firing, but then I realised he was already dead."
Jawad Karim Ali was on his way to pick up his aunt from Yarmukh Hospital when shooting started and the windscreen exploded cutting his face. " Then I was hit on my left shoulder by bullets, two of them another one went past my face. Now my aunt is out of hospital and I am sitting here. There was a big bang further away but no shots before the security people fired, and they just kept firing."
Baghdad's "Bloody Sunday" has become a test of sovereignty between the powers of the Iraqi government and the US. The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, said: "We will not tolerate the killing of our citizens in cold blood." The shooting was, he said, the seventh of its kind involving Blackwater.
The company, which has its headquarters in North Carolina, is one of the largest beneficiaries of the lucrative occupation dividend, holding the contract to provide security for top-level American officials.
Its reputation in Iraq is particularly controversial. It was the lynching of four of the company's employees in 2004 which led to the bloody confrontation in Fallujah. The men's bodies were set on fire, dragged through the streets and then hung from a bridge. Blackwater personnel are recognisable from their "uniform" of wraparound sunglasses and body armour over dark coloured sweatshirts and helmets. Employees are thought to earn about $600 (£300) per day.
Sunday's shooting happened at Mansour, once one of the most fashionable districts of Baghdad, with roads flanked by shops selling expensive goods, restaurants and art galleries. In the height of the sectarian bloodletting between Shias and Sunnis earlier this year dead bodies would be regularly strewn in the streets. A semblance of safety has returned since, and Mansour was held up as an example of how the US military "surge" was cutting the violence.
We were in Mansour on Sunday when we heard the sound of a deafening explosion just after midday. Black plumes of smoke rose from a half-blasted National Guard (army) post near a mosque. Five or six minutes afterwards there was the sound of prolonged shooting towards the south.
Police Captain Ali Ibrahim, who was on duty near Nisoor Square, said: " We heard the bomb go off, it was very loud, but it wasn't at the square. The police were, in fact, trying to clear the way for the contractors when they became agitated, they opened fire. No one was shooting at them."
Asked about the witness accounts, Ali al-Dabbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, confirmed: "The traffic policemen were trying to open the road for them. It was a crowded square and one small car did not stop, it was moving very slowly. They started shooting randomly, there was a couple and their child inside the car and they were hit."
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2984819.ece
==========
Pascal on the Rapport between Justice and Force
DEPARTMENT No Comment
PUBLISHED September 23, 2007
Blaise Pascal
Justice, force.—Il est juste que ce qui est juste soit suivi, il est nécessaire que ce qui est le plus fort soit suivi. La justice sans la force est impuissante; la force sans la justice est tyrannique. La justice sans force est contradite, parce qu’il y a toujours des méchants; la force sans la justice est accusée. Il faut donc mettre ensemble la justice et la force, et, pour cela, faire que ce qui est juste soit fort, ou que ce qui est fort soit juste.
Justice, force.–It is proper that what is just should be obeyed; it is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed. Justice without force is helpless; whereas the use of force without justice is tyrannical. Justice without force is futile, for there shall always be the wicked; but force without justice is always to be condemned. It follows that we must always combine justice and force and, to this end, what is just must always be made strong, or what is strong just.
–Blaise Pascal, Pensées ch. iii, sec. 285 (1660) in: Œuvres complètes p. 1160 (Pléiade ed. 1969)(S.H. transl.)
© 2007 The Harper's Magazine Foundation
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/hbc-90001270
==========
F6 note -- in addition to (items linked in) the post to which this post is a reply and preceding and (other) following, see also in particular (items linked in):
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=22300801 and preceding and following;
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=22003248 and preceding (and any following);
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=21766619 ;
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=17901522 and preceding and following; and
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=13127379 and preceding and following
In Jena, Louisiana, a noose was left dangling from a tree as a message of intimidation
DEPARTMENT No Comment [ http://www.harpers.org/subjects/NoComment ]
BY Scott Horton [ http://www.harpers.org/subjects/ScottHorton ]
PUBLISHED September 23, 2007
On Thursday, I took a train ride up the East Coast from Washington to New York, with some stops along the way. Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Newark and finally I was back home in Penn Station. It was a familiar trip. But there was something remarkable about this one. At every stop along the way I saw throngs of young people, of all races, but they were high school students for the most part. And everywhere they were wearing T-shirts expressing solidarity with the “Jena 6.”
“This is about justice,” one young woman explained to me in the dining court in Union Station. “It’s about the fight for justice in the South, in Jena, Louisiana, where my people get a different kind of justice from your people.” She was passionate, and a bit miffed that I didn’t know about the “Jena 6.”
The story of the “Jena 6” hasn’t gotten much coverage in America’s mainstream media—or didn’t until that day, when tens of thousands of protestors descended on the town of Jena.
And as I read some accounts of the events that led to this protest, I kept thinking: Tulia! The Tulia 46 [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulia,_Texas ]. While George W. Bush was governor of Texas, 46 people, 40 of them Black–a large part of the town’s Black population–were arrested and charged by a rogue cop in this West Texas town who secured their conviction and incarceration all on the basis of his say-so. It was very quickly established that the cop was a notorious racist and a liar. Nevertheless, most of the Tulia 46 languished in prison and despite rising public cries for Bush to use his authority as governor to reverse a manifest injustice, Bush did absolutely nothing. This was one of the first signs of George W. Bush’s idea of justice.
I have been dealing intensively with questions of justice for my entire life, mostly as an advocate for people overseas. I always knew there were justice problems in America. Every society has them, and try as it may, no society will ever be free of them.
But in my lifetime, I’ve always had the sense that the American government at its highest echelons, whether the administration be Democrat or Republican, stood for justice. The problems were kinks deep in the system: a crooked judge, a prosecutor on a vendetta, a juror on the take, a rotten cop. There might be differences on one policy or another, some engendering passionate debate, but there was agreement on the basics. I never had the sense that the president was twisting the system, or that the Department of Justice had become a tool of political corruption or oppression. In fact, I was proud of the American justice system. Proud to cite it as a model for others. And proud of the principles that it reflected, and the professionalism of those who served in it.
This has changed. All those high school students are right to sound the alarm bell. I won’t make any comments about the “Jena 6” case in particular, but I do believe that our justice system has been dangerously corrupted. And the most worrying source of that corruption is right at the top, George W. Bush, the president and the senior-most crew of advisors he brought into Washington in 2001. Karl Rove, who believes that all institutions of government should be turned to perpetuate the power of the G.O.P.
Bush has systematically taken a sledge hammer to the basic institutions of our legal system. He has used the criminal justice system for partisan games. His Justice Department launched prosecutions against dozens of people around the country not because of any real sense of wrongdoing, but because he considered these people to be a threat to the G.O.P.’s monopoly on power. The case of Governor Siegelman in Alabama is just one case; the Mississippi cases surrounding Oliver Diaz, Paul Minor and others fit the same pattern; as does the Thompson prosecution in Wisconsin; and a good dozen further cases I have examined.
To wield the criminal justice power in such a way is a very great crime. It is an attack against democracy; an act of betrayal of the system Bush swore an oath to uphold.
In fact the critical word that describes this conduct is tyrannical. If we examine Aristotle’s classic definition of what makes a tyrant, found in the Politics [ http://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/hbc-90001199 (below)], we find that Bush passes each test. While possessed of public authority and therefore accountable to the people, he denies accountability and he cloaks his own conduct in secrecy. Conversely, he refuses to respect the privacy of the common citizen, embarking upon massive invasions of privacy through the introduction of an unlawful warrantless surveillance program that incorporates data mining into the communications of tens of millions of Americans. He doesn’t bother to ask Congress to change the law. He just breaks it. And he lies about it, too.
He contrives foreign wars, launched on consciously false representations. He depletes the nation’s treasury with its cost. And he uses the war as a justification to arrogate to himself still greater powers which he strips away from the people and the other institutions of government.
And when he uses the word “justice,” it sends a shiver up my spine. George Bush has no sense of the meaning of this word. For him it means nothing more than an act of personal vengeance.
But when the Founding Fathers said “justice,” they meant something beautiful and noble. They saw a new society which was marked by a public conception of justice. That is, it would be a society in which every person accepts and appreciates that others similarly accept a series of shared first principles of rights and justice. And they conceived a republic crafted of institutions which were founded on those principles. And lastly, they envisioned a series of principles of justice, which were proclaimed and shared, and shared by society as a whole as a basis for justice. Among these principles is the idea of a government of limited powers, in which the functions of the state, and responsibilities with respect to the creation and maintenance of a justice system are shared equally by the three branches.
This was the Founding Father’s view. But for George W. Bush, this was inconvenient. He preferred a system under which his own personal powers were ascendant, and the notion of public justice receded as a personal “justice” rose in its place. Hence hitherto unthinkable things have happened; indeed, they have become commonplace. American citizens arrested in the United States are locked away with no access to a court on the basis of secret and unchallengeable Presidential “determinations.” Prisoners taken in wartime are stripped of all rights and treated with brutality and wanton cruelty. The President arrogantly proclaims that he is not bound by the law. And for each of these acts Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson, even Alexander Hamilton would have the same word: tyrant!
Can it come as any surprise that a man who behaves this way with enemies on a field of battle adopts a similar attitude towards those he reckons his domestic political enemies? America has been slow to recognize the full scope of this abuse, and too quick to credit the claims of Alberto Gonzales and his minions about those who have been charged, tried and often enough convicted in our courts. But the abuses meted out in political prosecutions are even greater assaults on our notion of justice.
Consider this: Governor Siegelman, accused of something which most public integrity prosecutors feel is not a crime in the first place, is sentenced to seven years and four months in prison. That’s the average sentence for a man convicted of a homicide in Alabama. And the judge who sentences him is a “loyal Bushie,” a member of the Executive Committee of the Republican Party, a person with a notorious grudge against him—who was assigned to the case under extremely suspicious circumstances. Or Paul Minor, the principal funder of the Mississippi Democratic Party, likewise convicted of charges which most attorneys consider not to be crimes, who was sentenced to a term of eleven years by another vindictive Republican judge before whom Bush had dangled the prospect of a promotion while the case was pending. The heavy stench of corruption surrounds these cases–corruption not of the accused, but of the persecutors, and it leads, repeatedly, straight into the White House.
And compare this with Scooter Libby, who, unlike Siegelman and Minor, actually did commit a serious crime. He will serve no sentence, thanks to Bush’s intervention—which was clearly timed to block his cooperation with prosecutors looking into further wrongdoing in the White House.
Or consider the cases involving private military contractors accused of murder, assault, torture, rape, extortion, kidnapping and other serious crimes. Not a single case prosecuted. And after an incident in Baghdad in which Blackwater contractors opened fire, leaving twenty-eight civilians dead [ http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2984819.ece (below)], what will happen? Don’t hold your breath expecting accountability. There will be none. Why? The Bush Administration tells us it doesn’t have the prosecutorial resources to deal with trivial things like murder, rape, assault and contract fraud involving tens of billions of dollars. All those prosecutorial resources have been diverted to locking up grandmothers in the inner city who file an incorrect voter registration form (and are suspected of being Democrats), Democrats who are guilty of campaign fundraising rule infractions, or who received political donations which are being labelled corrupt. In the mind of these Rovian prosecutors, what is corrupt about the donations is that they were made to Democrats, and not to Republicans. Now that’s corruption. A breathtaking betrayal that threatens the very foundation of our society. A cause for first anger and then rage.
And it’s plain enough that in the eyes of this administration, the life of an Iraqi, or an Afghan counts for nothing. As Blaise Pascal tells us [ http://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/hbc-90001270 (below)], when force is employed without justice, it is tyranny. This is tyranny.
A Government that views the lives of foreign citizens as worthless will in the shortest of time come to the same conclusions with respect to its own citizens. Indeed, look at what happened in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.
I’m proud of those hundreds of thousands of teenagers who took a stand for justice by recalling the incidents in Jena. I see the words of the prophet Isaiah, “a little child shall lead them.” The aspiration for justice is still alive, and it’s a great and noble thing–something for their parents to learn from. Two hundred and thirty years ago, America was a great beacon for justice. That beacon was viewed around the world and gave hope to all of mankind. And today, America’s wannabe autocrat has all but extinguished that beacon. It’s up to each of us as citizens to do what we can to rekindle it. Can we have any more important duty to our country than this?
---
Scott Horton is a contributor to Harper's Magazine and writes No Comment for this website.
A New York attorney known for his work in emerging markets and international law, especially human rights law and the law of armed conflict, Horton lectures at Columbia Law School. A life-long human rights advocate, Scott served as counsel to Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner, among other activists in the former Soviet Union. He is a co-founder of the American University in Central Asia, and has been involved in some of the most significant foreign investment projects in the Central Eurasian region. Scott recently led a number of studies of abuse issues associated with the conduct of the war on terror for the New York City Bar Association, where he has chaired several committees, including, most recently, the Committee on International Law. He is also a member of the board of the National Institute of Military Justice, the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, the EurasiaGroup and the American Branch of the International Law Association.
---
© 2007 The Harper's Magazine Foundation (emphasis in original)
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/09/hbc-90001272
==========
Aristotle on Tyrants and War
DEPARTMENT No Comment
PUBLISHED September 19, 2007
Detail of The School of Athens by Raffaello Sanzio (1509), showing Plato (left) and Aristotle (right)
. . . and further, it is part [of the nature of tyranny] to strive to see that all the affairs of the tyrant are secret, but that nothing is kept hidden of what any subject says or does, rather everywhere he will be spied upon . . . . Also it is part of these tyrannical measures to impoverish the nation so as to bolster the funds available for military defense, and so that the common citizens will be occupied with earning their livelihood and will have neither leisure nor opportunity to engage in conspiratorial acts . . . . Thus, the tyrant is inclined constantly to foment wars in order to preserve his own monopoly of power.
–Aristotle, Politics bk v, xi (350 BCE)
© 2007 The Harper's Magazine Foundation
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/hbc-90001199
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The real story of Baghdad's Bloody Sunday
Six days ago, at least 28 civilians died in a shooting incident involving the US security company Blackwater. But what actually happened? Kim Sengupta reports from the scene of the massacre
Published: 21 September 2007
The eruption of gunfire was sudden and ferocious, round after round mowing down terrified men women and children, slamming into cars as they collided and overturned with drivers frantically trying to escape. Some vehicles were set alight by exploding petrol tanks. A mother and her infant child died in one of them, trapped in the flames.
The shooting on Sunday, by the guards of the American private security company Blackwater, has sparked one of the most bitter and public disputes between the Iraqi government and its American patrons, and brings into sharp focus the often violent conduct of the Western private armies operating in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, immune from scrutiny or prosecution.
Blackwater's security men are accused of going on an unprovoked killing spree. Hassan Jabar Salman, a lawyer, was shot four times in the back, his car riddled with eight more bullets, as he attempted to get away from their convoy. Yesterday, sitting swathed in bandages at Baghdad's Yarmukh Hospital, he recalled scenes of horror. "I saw women and children jump out of their cars and start to crawl on the road to escape being shot," said Mr Salman. "But still the firing kept coming and many of them were killed. I saw a boy of about 10 leaping in fear from a minibus, he was shot in the head. His mother was crying out for him, she jumped out after him, and she was killed. People were afraid."
At the end of the prolonged hail of bullets Nisoor Square was a scene of carnage with bodies strewn around smouldering wreckage. Ambulances trying to pick up the wounded found their path blocked by crowds fleeing the gunfire.
Yesterday, the death toll from the incident, according to Iraqi authorities, stood at 28. And it could rise higher, say doctors, as some of the injured, hit by high-velocity bullets at close quarter, are unlikely to survive.
With public anger among Iraqis showing no sign of abating, the US administration has suspended all land movement by officials outside the heavily fortified Green Zone.
The Iraqi government has revoked Blackwater's licence to operate but it still remains employed by the US government. The Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, has, however, promised a "transparent" inquiry into what happened.
Blackwater and the US State Department maintain that the guards opened fire in self-defence as they reacted to a bomb blast and then sniper fire. Amid continuing accusations and recriminations, The Independent has tried to piece together events on that day.
The reports we got from members of the public, Iraqi security personnel and government officials, as well as our own research, leads to a markedly different scenario than the American version. There was a bomb blast. But it was too far away to pose any danger to the Blackwater guards, and their State Department charges. We have found no Iraqi present at the scene who saw or heard sniper fire.
Witnesses say the first victims of the shootings were a couple with their child, the mother and infant meeting horrific deaths, their bodies fused together by heat after their car caught fire. The contractors, according to this account, also shot Iraqi soldiers and police and Blackwater then called in an attack helicopter from its private air force which inflicted further casualties.
Blackwater disputes most of this. In a statement the company declared that those killed were "armed insurgents and our personnel acted lawfully and appropriately in a war zone protecting American lives".
The day after the killings, Mirenbe Nantongo, a spokeswoman for the US embassy, said the Blackwater team had " reacted to a car bombing". The embassy's information officer, Johann Schmonsees, stressed " the car bomb was in proximity to the place where State Department personnel were meeting, and that was the reason why Blackwater responded to the incident" .
Those on the receiving end tell another story. Mr Salman said he had turned into Nisoor Square behind the Blackwater convoy when the shooting began. He recalled: "There were eight foreigners in four utility vehicles, I heard an explosion in the distance and then the foreigners started shouting and signalling for us to go back. I turned the car around and must have driven about a hundred feet when they started shooting. My car was hit with 12 bullets it turned over. Four bullets hit me in the back and another in the arm. Why they opened fire? I do not know. No one, I repeat no one, had fired at them. The foreigners had asked us to go back and I was going back in my car, so there was no reason for them to shoot."
Muhammed Hussein, whose brother was killed in the shooting, said: "My brother was driving and we saw a black convoy ahead of us. Then I saw my brother suddenly slump in the car. I dragged him out of the car and saw he had been shot in the chest. I tried to hide us both from the firing, but then I realised he was already dead."
Jawad Karim Ali was on his way to pick up his aunt from Yarmukh Hospital when shooting started and the windscreen exploded cutting his face. " Then I was hit on my left shoulder by bullets, two of them another one went past my face. Now my aunt is out of hospital and I am sitting here. There was a big bang further away but no shots before the security people fired, and they just kept firing."
Baghdad's "Bloody Sunday" has become a test of sovereignty between the powers of the Iraqi government and the US. The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, said: "We will not tolerate the killing of our citizens in cold blood." The shooting was, he said, the seventh of its kind involving Blackwater.
The company, which has its headquarters in North Carolina, is one of the largest beneficiaries of the lucrative occupation dividend, holding the contract to provide security for top-level American officials.
Its reputation in Iraq is particularly controversial. It was the lynching of four of the company's employees in 2004 which led to the bloody confrontation in Fallujah. The men's bodies were set on fire, dragged through the streets and then hung from a bridge. Blackwater personnel are recognisable from their "uniform" of wraparound sunglasses and body armour over dark coloured sweatshirts and helmets. Employees are thought to earn about $600 (£300) per day.
Sunday's shooting happened at Mansour, once one of the most fashionable districts of Baghdad, with roads flanked by shops selling expensive goods, restaurants and art galleries. In the height of the sectarian bloodletting between Shias and Sunnis earlier this year dead bodies would be regularly strewn in the streets. A semblance of safety has returned since, and Mansour was held up as an example of how the US military "surge" was cutting the violence.
We were in Mansour on Sunday when we heard the sound of a deafening explosion just after midday. Black plumes of smoke rose from a half-blasted National Guard (army) post near a mosque. Five or six minutes afterwards there was the sound of prolonged shooting towards the south.
Police Captain Ali Ibrahim, who was on duty near Nisoor Square, said: " We heard the bomb go off, it was very loud, but it wasn't at the square. The police were, in fact, trying to clear the way for the contractors when they became agitated, they opened fire. No one was shooting at them."
Asked about the witness accounts, Ali al-Dabbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, confirmed: "The traffic policemen were trying to open the road for them. It was a crowded square and one small car did not stop, it was moving very slowly. They started shooting randomly, there was a couple and their child inside the car and they were hit."
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2984819.ece
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Pascal on the Rapport between Justice and Force
DEPARTMENT No Comment
PUBLISHED September 23, 2007
Blaise Pascal
Justice, force.—Il est juste que ce qui est juste soit suivi, il est nécessaire que ce qui est le plus fort soit suivi. La justice sans la force est impuissante; la force sans la justice est tyrannique. La justice sans force est contradite, parce qu’il y a toujours des méchants; la force sans la justice est accusée. Il faut donc mettre ensemble la justice et la force, et, pour cela, faire que ce qui est juste soit fort, ou que ce qui est fort soit juste.
Justice, force.–It is proper that what is just should be obeyed; it is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed. Justice without force is helpless; whereas the use of force without justice is tyrannical. Justice without force is futile, for there shall always be the wicked; but force without justice is always to be condemned. It follows that we must always combine justice and force and, to this end, what is just must always be made strong, or what is strong just.
–Blaise Pascal, Pensées ch. iii, sec. 285 (1660) in: Œuvres complètes p. 1160 (Pléiade ed. 1969)(S.H. transl.)
© 2007 The Harper's Magazine Foundation
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/hbc-90001270
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F6 note -- in addition to (items linked in) the post to which this post is a reply and preceding and (other) following, see also in particular (items linked in):
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=22300801 and preceding and following;
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=22003248 and preceding (and any following);
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=21766619 ;
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=17901522 and preceding and following; and
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=13127379 and preceding and following
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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